Carrot Soup from Graasland and Naan from Vegan Eats World

Can you believe tomorrow’s the last day of VeganMoFo already? I didn’t get to write (or read) as many posts as I would’ve liked for various reasons, but I still want to post as much as I can before October’s over! I’d intended to spend my afternoon and evening making all kinds of baked goods to freeze for later: pumpkin bagels, earl grey-scented bread rolls, cranberry muffins, maybe a loaf or two of bread… so many wonderful plans. Sadly, though, my beloved little oven decided to stop working just as I wanted to begin (noooo!), so I’ve been trying to think of other ways to satisfy my need for breads and sweet treats. So far I’ve come up with waffles, pancakes, crepes, flatbreads…

Speaking of flatbreads! Pictured above is some fresh cumin seed naan served with a bowl of curried carrot soup. The naan bread is a recipe from Terry Hope Romero’s new book Vegan Eats World, which I picked up last week when I attended her book launch & cooking demo in Amsterdam! The book is full of inspiring recipes but my boyfriend and I both love naan so this bread was a  great place to start. I’ve made other naan recipes before that were pretty similar to this one, but it worked really well and I’d really like to try some of the variations as well (coriander & garlic naan!). It’s the only thing I’ve made from the book so far but the other recipes sound very promising as well so I can’t wait to try more. We had the chance to try her olive seitan after the cooking demo and I liked that a lot, so I’m planning on making that as soon as possible.

To go with the bread, I made this roasted carrot soup from Gnoe’s blog Graasland. I love roasted carrots (how I miss my oven already…) but I hadn’t tried them in a soup yet, so this was a lovely recipe to try. I did make the small change of using an Indian curry paste rather than a Thai one, which really changes the whole flavour of the soup, but it went very well with the naan bread! Oh, and I had to estimate the amount of carrots I used as my kitchen scales decided to stop working, too. I need to take better care of my kitchen!

Has anyone else gotten Vegan Eats World yet? Have you tried any recipes? I’d love to hear recommendations! Gnoe also posted pictures of the samples we got to try at the demo – olive chickpea seitan with lemony cashew sauce and banana chocolate cheesecake with a speculoos biscuit crust. Amazing.

Pumpkin, lentil, and date soup from Vegalicious

We’ve been having more and more cold autumn days, so when I came home with a small round pumpkin a few days ago we immediately decided to turn it into a pot of thick, comforting soup. I wanted to make something slightly different from the soups I usually make, so I chose this recipe for pumpkin soup with red lentils and dates from Vegalicious. There were at least ten other amazing-looking pumpkin soup recipes on there, as well (that website is such a great resource!) but I happened to have the ingredients on hand for this one. I added fewer dates than the recipe called for because I was worried the sweetness might be too much (I have a weird aversion to sweetness in some savoury foods) but it was not overpowering at all so I would have no problem making the recipe as written next time. I also like that while it isn’t overly spicy, the small amount of pepper really adds to the warming quality of the dish. Mmm, pumpkin soup is the best.

The post on Vegalicious also refers to a recipe for bread bowls, which I though was a really cool idea, so I decided to make those while the soup was simmering. These turned out even better than I’d expected – the dough was pretty easy to shape (I used four small ramekins and made bread sticks with the leftover pieces) and the bowls were very sturdy so we didn’t have to worry about soup seeping out as we kept going back for second and third helpings. It’s probably a good thing I made them relatively small, though – when we ate the bowls at the end of the meal they were surprisingly filling. I added some wholemeal flour and dried herbs to the dough so they tasted great and were pretty healthy, too. And I just love the idea of edible bowls!

Poppy Seed Crescent Rolls from Seitan is my Motor

When I was looking through Mihl’s recipe index for a dish to make this MoFo, I knew I would have to pick some type of bread. If you read her blog you’ll know what I mean – I’ve written about her sourdough recipe before, but Mihl’s website also has a great variety of sweet and savoury yeast-leavened breads of all shapes and sizes.

The recipe for these Poppy Seed Crescent Rolls caught my eye because it uses a pre-ferment for the dough that reduces the required kneading time, I have a jar of poppy seeds that I don’t use often enough, and well, the rolls looked really delicious and pretty.

My rolls didn’t brown as nicely as Mihl’s, but they still turned out really well and I love the shape. Why would you ever want to make rounds and loaves when you can shape your bread into crescents? I ended up making 16 rolls rather than 12 because it seemed easier than trying to figure out how to cut a rectangle into six equal triangles (this is harder than it sounds! or maybe it’s just me) so I had two baking sheets full of these wonderful little speckled crescents to share with my boyfriend. We tried them with a few different toppings over the past two days but margarine & strawberry jam were my favourite. I may add a little wholemeal flour to the dough if I make them again because I prefer bread that’s at least partially whole grain, but I’d definitely like to make this recipe again. I think their festive appearance would make them a great addition to a breakfast spread for a special occasion.